Harvey O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland. Since graduating from University College Cork, he has lived in London, working as a teacher and educational manager. He has published articles and poetry, and a play, Closing Time, which he co-authored, was staged at the Battersea Arts Centre, London. He published his first novel Nidiya and The Children of The Revolution in 2010.

As you've asked –

Above my bed, a shelf of books,And a radio clock and a plastic yellow rose(You doubt the details - I’ll send you the Instagram!).The books are not packed together, upstanding, or leaning like sleepy soldiers,Organised by subject, author, or even size;With the last to be read on top,They sit in a sloppy pile, an ill-constructed tower, That rises above the radio and the rose in its narrow vase,And could topple at any moment.The titles? It would embarrass me to say(What we choose to read is somehow giving too much away)But I can tell you, as I lie here planning the rest of the morning,There is nothing neat or coherentAbout this babel of books.

At the House of A. Frank

How tiresomeThe burden of a haloEven for a secular saint.I guess Anne Frank would have tossed it aside,As we do with childish things.She would have grown bored with the toy town of an Old Town,Confiding her resentment In the pages of a lost diary.And finally, she would have said enough is enough,Gone out and crossed one bridge after anotherTill she came to one blazoned with crimson.

In midwinter

The hot air balloon'sgrey deflated canvas lieslike a patch of snowin a field of snow.

Around and aboutfrom the distance it surveyedpeople come hitheras hopeful as thaw.

Buoy

Drowning, not waving!The winch of words lifted usTo end our struggle.

Like the sea-rescuedSurvivors, drenched, dripping,We spin towards the sun.

Editor's note: Although I generally seek short and medium length poems, I made an exception in the case of Harvey O'Leary's A Skeleton Goes in Search, Read it -- and you'll understand why.

A Skeleton Goes In Search

I

It comes to a life of sortsIn the echoing chamber of an underground station,Rattles the cage of itself For it is no more than the sum of its bars,Feels the wind chill through the slates of the boneFrom the draft of commuter trains that pass like scars,And stumbling from the darkness of the groundGoes in search of something more than itself.

It finds it on a trainOn the bones of fellowless passengersTo whom it presents the vacancy of hollowed sockets,Which is returned in abundanceWith a dead-eyed staring indifference.No one seems to careBetween one station and another.The carriage hurtles along while the minds driftAnd the faces betray no need of comfort.The skeleton imagines their distressAt seeing their own reflection,Takes what it can and tries to respondBut the gaping space between jaws is expressionless.

II

The day is cold for the sun is useless.But the skeleton, dressed, has taken to the High Street.Hoisted and pulled, it moves in a mincing marionette fashion,As if it were learning to walk for a second timeAnd trying out its legs like parts that had just been attached.At first, few people pay it attentionAnd it sifts through the crowd like one of the crowd.But the crowd thins and slows down to take it in,A skeleton that has gone in search of its lost flesh.

A baby chuckles as it passesBut cries as it pauses.The skeleton hurries along, ricocheting From one daft mother and child scenario to the nextAs if stoking several fires or playing with a pile of tottering plates.How these hate-filled womenThink of no one but themselves and their ungrateful progeny When threatened by a bundle of bones in a dirty overcoat.

Their menfolk are just as ignorantWith nothing really to sayBeyond what is inked on their brazen bodies,The slogans and promises Of a love that endures as long as it’s broken.And before the words become unintelligibleAs the flesh slackens and droopsTheir bald babies will have learned them by heartAnd these are the only words they will ever be spoken.

III

The skeleton is alone, wraps itself in more rags,Settles in the shadow of a doorwayWith a bony hand outstretched that can rattle like a tin.It watches people in shops Passing coins from one hand to another.Money keeps them together;They can never afford to be without it.Even those that deign to pauseCount out their pennies With plush upholstered hands that might have been more generous.

When nothing is happeningThe skeleton sees what’s really happening in the street.There is a kind of silenceIn all the joyless traffic of noiseAs strangers audition each otherAnd familiars spread the same rumours about their own lives.Above the din, as if in bold translation,The bright street signs ply the usual lies.

Taxi cabs and buses pass. They may as well be driverlessFor all the dreams of rioting and bloodshed. Their drifting cargo stare into the streetBlind to the sight of a skeleton wrapped in clothes.

The light too passes and the streets become desertedBy those who visit from time to time but have gone home.Assembled in doorways or stretching out on benches,Ghouls, who haunted designated addresses,Meet the eyes of strangers with a token of their own grief.If they don’t live in the dreary here and nowThey wander down the roads of the splintering pastFor which lines are prepared but can never be cast.

The skeleton walks among them and wondersAt what can be can be said About what cannot be said.It is inexorably sad,These lives reminding lives of what they once had.

The skeleton divests its self of its rags and walks naked,No longer in the throes of woes and others’ lies.The light is orchestrating one more dawnBut listening to the tweet of early birdsongIt can hear the cries of a flagrant dusk.